Tesla looks to local machine shops to fix supplier issues

Tesla’s electric vehicles aren’t known to have the best quality and production problems consistently constrain the company. Now Tesla is looking to address some of the problems by turning to local machine shops to fix the quality of flawed components from its suppliers. CNBC reports that, Tesla has stacks of rejected components outside at one of its suppliers with current and former Tesla engineers saying that the company is “struggling” amidst a “significant volume of flawed or damaged parts from its suppliers.”

Tesla employees claim the issues came up as Tesla tries to ramp up production, particularly of the Model 3, but problems were also found in part numbers that were designed for the Model S and Model X as well. The parts in question included door frames, doublers, torque boxes, nodes and shock mounts. These parts now are awaiting rework and design tweaks. Working with local companies will help Tesla avoid the costs and waiting from overseas shipping.

Meanwhile, Tesla CEO Elon Musk promises the company to finally be profitable in Q3 and Q4 of 2018. Its hard to take Musk seriously sometimes and this supplier issue and design changes could cut into Tesla’s margins.